


Fantasy vs. Reality

by Cat_Moon



Category: Moonlight (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:37:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat_Moon/pseuds/Cat_Moon
Summary: For a brief yet endless time, Mick had thought Josef dead.  Now he has to face his feelings for his friend.  Coda for the episode "Sleeping Beauty."





	Fantasy vs. Reality

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first JOCK piece I ever wrote (my tastes are more for Mickbeth and Jayshay), forgotten about until I just found it. Written in 2009, and originally posted on the various ML boards.

Mick watched Josef sip at the drink in his hand. He was sitting on the other end of the couch. Well, it was more of a sprawl, Mick thought with a fond grin. The man never sat up straight when he could stretch out, his feet up on a convenient surface, arms out from his side and his head back. Almost like he was offering himself…

The grin left Mick’s face in a hurry.

The weird thoughts wouldn’t stop coming though, they’d plagued him ever since the moment he was told his best friend was dead. The feelings he’d experienced then were beyond his ability to explain in words, and the questions tumbled around in his brain so much he couldn’t slow them down enough to get a good look at them. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. The next thirty six hours after that were a blur. Again, he almost lost Josef, this time to an assassin sent by old man Whitley.

_I almost lost Josef._ The thought was staggering, even here in the safety of his own home, with the man in question whole and sitting next to him.

Mick needed to focus on less disturbing thoughts, so he once again turned to anger, remembering his fury when he’d come home and found Josef entertaining freshies in the living room, in blatant disregard for his own life. Fear and fury were close cousins...or in this case maybe identical twins because he was hard pressed to tell them apart and he had lit into Josef for his stupidity. But Josef Kostan wasn’t stupid, not by any stretch of the imagination. He had a deserved reputation for being on the carefully paranoid side. Foolhardy wasn’t a term Mick would have ever applied to the other vamp. It didn’t add up.

Maybe, this at least, was a question he could ask and get an answer to. “Explain something to me, Josef. Why did you really bring those girls over here when you knew how risky it was? You spend plenty of time alone, and I _know_ you don’t have a death wish. Tell me the truth.” No, he didn’t want to contemplate the idea that Josef could be lonely. Or what he might be lonely for.

Josef studied his drink for a few moments before raising his eyes to Mick’s and reaching a visible decision. “Mick, you know I treat my freshies very well. They love me,” he said totally matter-of-factly. “How do you think they felt when they thought I was dead?”

Mick winced, thinking of how _he’d_ felt and unable to fault that. It was all so raw, so huge, he hated them both for reminding him.

Josef continued. “I didn’t let _you_ think I was dead any longer than necessary, I came right here.”

Mick just _knew_ they were both thinking of the embarrassing conversation with Beth in the hallway before he’d entered his apartment and seen Josef sitting there…in _his_ robe… _I don’t think it was even clean._ There was no doubt Josef had heard every word spoken, although he’d never brought the subject up. Just talking about the situation brought it all back for Mick, the gaping sense of loss, the hole in his heart that he knew would never be repaired… He hadn’t realized how much Josef meant to him until that moment. Now…he was confused and uncertain and insanely hopeful about the older vamp’s feelings for him. It was disturbing, seeing his closest friend in this new light. Would Josef mourn _him_ , if the situation were reversed?

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t want you to think I was a sentimental sap,” Josef answered with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Mick covered up his growing feelings with humor, hoping Josef wasn’t picking up on them – yet also hoping he was. “That was before I found out you were a sentimental sap.”

“Well, there’s that.”

Mick got up and walked to the window, needing to put some space between them. There was never enough goddamn space between them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?”

“Oh, that’s a comforting start.”

Mick steeled his nerve, refusing to back down, from either of them. “I thought you couldn’t love.” _Couldn’t love_ _ **me**_ _._ The words were there between them. Mick turned to face him and added hastily, “Weren’t capable of it, that _we_ weren’t capable of it.” Knowing it was hurtful even if the other vampire would never show it. He _knew_ now. Josef could love, and hurt. _Could he love me?_

Josef looked at him in astonishment. “We?”

“Vampires,” Mick clarified.

“You’ve been mooning around over Beth for months now, and what was that with Coraline all those years?”

“Yeah, what _was_ that?” Mick quipped. “As for Beth…I don’t know where that’s going. If it’s going anywhere. She has a boyfriend, one that she went back to.”

Now it was Josef’s turn to wince, in sympathy. “I didn’t know that.”

Mick looked at that impassive face, the face that gave nothing away except when it _did_ , like when he was relating the story of what happened to Sarah and the pain and incipient tears were palpable.

_Could he want me?_

“Listen Mick, this whole vampire/mortal thing, it’s a fairy tale. It doesn’t end well, take it from me.” And then Josef was getting up, crossing the room to stand close to him. Very close. He put his hand to the side of Mick’s face.

Mick’s eyes slid closed of their own accord as he basked in the feelings that were coursing through him. Elation and excitement and terror and hunger.

“I can’t give you a fairy tale, but I can show you reality. If you want me to.”

Eternity stretched before him in the silence of the perfect moment. “Show me.”

XXX

Fingers on him were cool, efficient, comforting even as they inflamed. And he felt something he hadn’t since those wild eighties days, never acknowledged. Josef had always known. Of course he did. He was just waiting for Mick to figure it out. When the fingers entered him he couldn’t believe how much he wanted this. How good it felt.

“Please,” he cried out.

“It’s okay Mick,” Josef gentled with his touch now as Mick lay on the couch, boneless, sated, torn apart and reborn once again. “This is reality.”

The end

1/10/09


End file.
